Acts 1:12-26, "Discerning Choices on Mission with Jesus"
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Discernment - how do you make your choices? Do you look for certain principles and choose by those every time? Do you use the wisdom of others and do what your counselors tell you? Do you get paralyzed by indecision and miss opportunities? How can we become the kind of people who continue to move forward into God’s will for our lives with confidence that we are choosing what is right?
Today we’ll see that the disciples of Jesus demonstrated three qualities that helped them move forward in their mission to continue the words and works of Jesus.
1:14 - devoting themselves to prayer - apostles, women, Mary, His brothers
1:15 - 120 the number of people in a town required for there to be a synagogue court. The Jews believed that with a certain number of faithful Jews gathered in one place, they had authority from God to make judgments on cases involving the Law of Moses. They would set up a local synagogue court of three judges. It was subject to the Sanhedrin, which was like the Supreme Court. But Luke is indicating that the disciples of Jesus probably believed their community had His authority to make judgments, and the first decision was who would join the eleven remaining apostles as the twelfth leader of the community.
Eleven because Judas...
1:16 - the scripture had to be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke beforehand by the mouth of David...
first half of our statement of faith regarding the Bible: “We believe that God has spoken in the Scriptures, both Old and New Testaments, through the words of human authors. As the verbally inspired Word of God, the Bible is without error in the original writings, the complete revelation of His will for salvation,” (efca.org/sof)
God the Holy Spirit is the “breath” of God. "Inspired” means breathed into. When we say that the Bible is the verbally inspired Word of God is that the Holy Spirit influenced the minds of human authors to write what God intended to reveal to us about salvation. There is an unbreakable connection between the Holy Spirit and the Word of God, the Bible. Paul explains it this way:
1 Corinthians 2:10–11 (ESV)
these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God.
For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God.
So, the Holy Spirit is the only one who knows all the thoughts of God, down to their deepest level. And so we need the Holy Spirit to help us understand those thoughts when we read them in God’s Word:
1 Corinthians 2:12 (ESV)
Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.
So, the disciples in the early days of the church, with no New Testament to guide them, were reading the Hebrew Bible expecting that the Holy Spirit would help them understand God’s thoughts about decisions that needed to be made in their lives. Their devotion to prayer gave them a trust in the Holy Spirit to guide them. This is the second quality of a disciple on mission with Jesus.
The result was that they saw a pattern in the Bible that helped them understand one of the more confusing events of their lives, which was, how they were to make sense of Judas and his place as an apostle.
The pattern revealed in the Hebrew Bible was that the Messiah of God faces opposition and betrayal. Judas had betrayed Jesus, but David, Jesus’ ancestor had been betrayed too, and he wrote about this in several Psalms. Two of these, 69 and 109, the apostles realized were helping them understand the meaning of events in their own time. Judas bore his curse in his lonely death, and this fulfilled David’s prayer in Psalm 69,
Psalm 69:25 (ESV)
May their camp be a desolation;
let no one dwell in their tents.
But then Peter also noticed that David had prayed that when the betrayer has born his curse, another should take his office as a leader of God’s people.
Psalm 109:8 (ESV)
May his days be few;
may another take his office!
Peter and the apostles were so soaked in the scriptures that when the events of their lives unfolded, they made the connection with revelation God had given a thousand years before. This is the third quality we need to make choices while we are on mission with Jesus.
When we have absorbed the Bible over time, we grow in our ability to discern our times and what God is doing in the present tense. There are patterns to the revelation of scripture. Often we go to the Bible looking for principles. And there are many. But there are patterns too. And patterns are helpful because when we begin to notice the patterns, they help us to pick them out when we see them in unexpected places.
What’s the pattern we are seeing in our time? One I am seeing is a renewed desire in many Christians to devote themselves to pray. And the pattern we see in the Bible is that when this happens, when God’s people devote themselves to pray, God moves in some way. And often He moves in some surprising way. And when we pray with our Bibles open, we are ready to respond to God in the ways He is moving.
Another pattern is the contrast we see in the Bible between the people of God and nations around them in the way they do justice. We see Abraham, Jacob, Solomon, and Elijah demonstrate generosity and hospitality to outsiders, while we see Sodom, Esau, Laban, and the nations around the kingdom of Israel hostile to outsiders and unconcerned for widows, orphans, and the poor. So Jesus tells His disciples to give to anyone without expectation and love their enemies. And the Apostle Paul says to give with joy and love strangers. In what ways are we following that pattern given the needs around us.
The final pattern I’ll point out is helpful in a different way. The pattern is essentially a season of tribulation, small “t”, that weeds out the people who were hanging onto God’s people, but when the time of testing comes, walk away. This always leaves a remnant of believers, more fully devoted to the kingdom of God, more passionate about preaching the gospel, living more holy lives. This has happened only in a small way in our place, but is happening to a much greater degree in many other places around the world.
This pattern is helpful because it brings us back to our text, and gives us a final lesson. The disciples had seen the pattern of tribulation refining the remnant in their own lives as well. Times of tribulation and difficulty had always left a remnant of the faithful (see Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc.), and they had two men who had remained faithful to Jesus through all the difficulties of His life, ministry, and sufferings. These are Joseph Barsabbas Justus and Matthias.
In the end, maybe it didn’t matter so much that they got the right person as much as they got the right kind of person. And they trust the Spirit to bless any means they use to choose the right person. So they cast lots. This may seem like they’re leaving things up to chance. But in reality, if we believe in the sovereignty of God, and we are guided by God’s Spirit through His word in a season of prayer, we can trust that whatever outcome we achieve was God’s will all along.
We often look for guidance in some clear writing on the wall moment. But God rarely leads that way. And we think that if we don’t get the exact person, timing, or project right, we aren’t doing God’s will. But maybe it isn’t that God has exactly one person, the exact moment, or the perfect program for us to accomplish His will. Maybe it’s more that He has a kind of person He uses. The kind of person who is devoted to prayer, saturated in His Word, and sensitive to the guiding of the Holy Spirit. And He can move in lots of different ways through the right kind of person or group of people. People who are faithful, generous, loving, hospitable, holy, and filled with His Spirit. And as the Scribes and Pharisees showed us, just using the principles of the Bible can lead us into the wrong choices if we aren’t the right kind of people.
So, what decisions to we face right now? We see all kinds of ways we can spend time in our community groups. We have ways we can spend our money. We have ministry opportunities to do some good in the community around us. Which are the right choices? How we make the choice may be more important than making sure we get the choice exactly right.
This means that if you are a believer in Jesus, devoted to prayer, saturated in God’s Word, and being formed in Christ-likeness, trust that whatever seems right in your spirit was guided by the Holy Spirit. And if you are not those things, whatever choice you make is less important than becoming that kind of person.